After 6th Suicide, Cabbies Call On City Hall To Stop The Deaths

NEW YORK CITY HALL — In what has become a disturbingly frequent ritual, taxi workers gathered outside City Hall Monday morning to demand lawmakers end a recent spate of professional drivers' suicides. Brooklyn cabbie Abdul Saleh was found dead in his apartment Friday morning, making him the sixth for-hire driver to kill himself in about seven months amid financial struggles, advocates say.

Drivers want City Hall to stop the deaths by reining in Uber, Lyft and other app-based services that have put intense pressure on the taxi industry. Seven City Council bills aimed at doing that are languishing in a committee.

"There is no other solution to this crisis but a political one that requires regulation," said Bhairavi Desai, the executive director of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance.

Saleh, 59, worked as a driver for more than three decades. He worked 12-hour shifts but still struggled to cover his portion of the lease on the yellow cab he shared with his driving partner, the Taxi Workers Alliance said.

Saleh's death came just weeks after authorities pulled the body of cabbie Yu Mein "Kenny" Chow from the East River on May 23, marking the fifth driver suicide since November. Taxi driver Nicanor Ochisor, black-car driver Douglas Schifter, and livery drivers Danilo Corporan Castillo and Alfredo Perez have also taken their own lives in recent months.

The problem has gotten so bad that the Taxi Workers Alliance has changed its answering machine to include a suicide prevention hotline number, Desai said.

Taxi workers have persistently pushed for regulations that would level the playing field between the exploding app-based sector and their own, including a cap on the number of for-hire vehicles, setting the base taxi fare as the minimum rate across the industry, and financial help for struggling cabbies who also own their taxi medallions.

The Taxi Workers Alliance plans to take to the streets outside City Hall every weekday until the workers' demands are met, Desai said.

The Council’s Committee on For-Hire Vehicles is considering several bills that would do some of those things. The panel is ready to move them forward but is waiting for the go-ahead from Speaker Corey Johnson, said Councilman Ruben Diaz Sr., the committee chairman.

"We are ready to move on all of them," Diaz (D-Bronx) said. "I didn't come here to play games."

Johnson denied that. The bills are still going through the "legislative process," he said, but there's no timeline for passing them.

"We've talked about a few guiding principles, " Johnson said. "Number one, protecting drivers. Number two, creating a level of fairness between the for-hire vehicle industry and the yellow and green industry and liveries. And number three, reducing congestion."

The Taxi Workers Alliance wants to see some of the bills amended to more closely match its desires before the Council passes them, Desai said.

U.S. Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-Manhattan) said some blame lies with the Taxi and Limousine Commission, or TLC, which sometimes fines drivers heavily for violations. He said Meera Joshi, the taxi commissioner, should step down because of her failure to address the problems drivers face.

"I think she happens to be a nice lady, but this is a major crisis where six men have taken their lives and everybody walks around like they never existed," Espaillat said.

In a statement, Joshi said she reacted to Espaillat's remarks with "shock that someone who purports to be supporting drivers expends so much political energy trying to get me to resign when it is his friend, Reverend/Councilmember Rubin (sic) Diaz, Sr. who holds the actual power to make the change he wants."

Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi supports imposing surcharges on app-based trips to help struggling taxi drivers.

A company spokeswoman said Uber is "saddened" by Saleh's death and thinks all full-time drivers should be able to make a living wage, regardless of who employs them.

"Any new regulations must not hurt the millions of outer borough Uber riders who have long been ignored by yellow taxis and who don't have access to reliable public transit," the spokeswoman, Danielle Filson, said in a statement.

The Independent Drivers Guild, which represents drivers for Uber, Lyft and other ride-hailing apps, said officials should pursue a cap on the number of drivers rather than the number of vehicles. That would force companies to compete for labor and improve drivers' pay, the group said.

The TLC said it would propose new rules around for-hire driver income after the guild submitted a petition in March seeking a minimum wage for app-based drivers. The rules are expected to be proposed by the end of July, a TLC spokesman said.

"Until there are living wage rules to protect for-hire vehicle drivers and a halt on new drivers entering the industry, the desperation will continue," the guild said in a statement. "Our deepest sympathies to the family and friends of Mr. Saleh and to all the suffering drivers, whether they drive for taxis, livery, apps or black cars."

Struggling drivers can call the TLC's Driver Protection Unit at 718-391-5539 for help finding financial and legal counseling.

Anyone struggling with mental health can get help by calling National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 or visiting this website. New Yorkers can also find resources by calling 1-888-NYC-WELL.

(Lead image: Taxi workers rallied outside City Hall on Monday after the sixth professional driver's suicide in about seven months. Photo by Noah Manskar/Patch)